


Ever in their favour

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, BAMF Mycroft, BAMF Sherlock, Big Brother Mycroft, Dystopia, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myth would later say Mycroft Holmes was born to save the world, destined to overthrown the Capitol. Really, he was just trying to save his little brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever in their favour

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I own nothing.

BOOM!

The cannon struck twelve, banging a claxon like gonging over every district, ever home and citizen. 

Vid screens were preinstalled by the capitol, even in the poorest districts, where they shone for a time with an unnaturally clean gleam amongst the grime and dirt of crippling poverty surrounding them, an odd extravagance explained by screaming and blood, or most often ominous endless silence and layers of accumulating dust when removal or renovation was attempted, however innocently begun. 

Every citizen should be watching, regardless of age or status, every eye glued to an inescapable screen. This was the power and spectacle of the capitol. This was their message. None could escape it. 

 

Sherlock Holmes has always made an art-form of doing the impossible. 

 

BOOM!

Twelve pedestals arranged at unnatural intervals, emphasizing the flourishes of cruelty associated with quarter quells as eleven sounds into the dome’s sky. Twelve oddly assorted lambs, none older than twenty, twitch involuntarily, every eye watching wondering if they will follow the urge, almost considered tradition by this fifth quarter quell, throwing themselves suicidally prematurely onto the inevitable destiny they were born too, before pain saps any martyrly honour from their bones. 

They are all meant to be there, destined from birth, ordered by the capitol. All but one. 

BOOM!

Two down, ten to go. Grey eyes, newly but indelibly familiar flick up directly towards the cameras, filling every screen across the outside world, their owner all frightening stillness and ghostly calm. 

Sherlock Holmes was born to stand in this arena. Born, unlike all the others, to win. Distict One blood older even then the president’s, duty and honour in a literal family motto so old no one saw the irony any longer. Raised to be a career, destined to be a victor. The spare to spare the heir. That was the destiny, the story, the proclamation. 

BOOM! 

The figure shifts as nine arrives, grey eyes disappearing behind carefully slack lids, hands forming strategic fists, slowly tapping across two bands of flashing gold. 

Sherlock had been defying authority since the day he first drew breath. Too quiet, too smart, too thin, too flighty, too sensitive, too aloof, too weak, too different, too freaky. 

By ten, it was clear to everyone that while Sherlock Holmes was born to be a victor, he was destined to be a victim. 

His brother disagreed. 

BOOM!

Eight. Every eye watches the games, from start to finish, but for all that mandatory doesn’t mean attention or regard, ratings will still will out, and no part has ever been more popular than the reaping. Not even the blood bath of the Cornucopia holds the audiences thirst for agony better than the promise of fresh blood offered by the reaping. 

Generally, nobody particularly bothers with concentrating on district One’s reaping, the pre-destined, pre-ordained feel too the smug and cold and plain boring for most.

The quarter nature of the quell, the unexpected selection, rumours whispered before the draw of the eternal spare to the heirs of the sanctified president, all guaranteed a wider attentive viewership, but every eye was glued from the moment the first scream rang out, too early and too eerie for comfort. 

Mycroft Holmes’ name rang out over and over, six guards restraining, with rather a lot of difficulty, a twig of a boy, carrying him from the stage, back into the reaching arms of a silvery man who restrained him with barely a word, brown eyes never leaving the spectacle on the stage, desperately seeking grey, eyes only sliding together in the last instant, unseen by any camera. 

BOOM!

Six gone, six to go. The echoes meet only silence, enrapturing all those held in captive audience. Quarter quells were always special, always cruelly unusual, but this one, five times the charm, was always going to be special. The mercy of only twelve tributes combined with the cruel reality of a rigged hunt ensured the collective breath holding of all districts, even the coldest. 

BOOM!

Five. Mycroft allows himself a single, shallow, indrawn breath. Loving Sherlock had been easier than breathing, even in the purified too sweet air of the capitol, easy when their parents never bothered to try, hardly surprising for capitol brats rarely feel even passing affection from their parents. 

The reasons for this are all too clear now that he stands on a ledge poised into oblivion, but some part of Mycroft still boils with barely supressed hate, because trying should never had entered into it at all, not matter the stakes or the consequences, the heartache or the tragedy.

The part of him that will always be a parent, before even a brother, will never understand at all, not even now.

BOOM!

Three left. 

They first watched the games together when Sherlock was three, freshly returned from the crèche, Mycroft’s carefully manipulated reward, never asked for and never denied.

So they watch children be selected, watch the young fall and the old cheer, watch their future, known or not. 

BOOM!

Two to go. 

Mycroft was never meant to be in the Arena.

Technically, every child born into the authority of the capitol has an equal chance of being reaped for the games, but Mycroft was born to be the heir, and exceptions define his whole life. 

When he choose however, not even the capitol could defy destiny enough to deny him his choice.

BOOM!

Two. Volunteering had been startling easy, in the end. He certainly hadn’t planned it.

Mycroft was the smart one, the one who planned everything, the one being groomed to rule the world. He was the heir. 

Mycroft was the smart one. He knew just how to push, how to use tradition and privilege and power to get what he wanted. He used it that day, used the knowledge and the world he had been raised in. 

He was groomed from birth to use his power and intelligence to rule an empire. That was his destiny, his fate, his story. He was born to rule the world, not change it.  
And maybe he would have. But, destiny forgot to take one small thing into account. 

Love. 

Mycroft Holmes loved his little brother. He was born with the odds fixed ever in his favour. Fixed ever against his freak of a brother. 

So, when the quarter quell showed up and his twelve year old brother was thrown into a role he wasn’t born to, when they broke destiny, Mycroft did what he’d been born to.

He played god. 

Because he knew the capitol, knew it the way he knew his own mind palace, every hidden corridor and door, every secret and scandal, every tradition and rule. So, he rolled the dice.

May the odds be ever in his favour.

*

Across the districts, a quiet, dark corridor in the center of an outpost, a small pale shadow detached itself from the protection of its darker neighbors, slipping past a guard’s gleaming back, skulking with ease into the chamber beyond. 

Using the skills he was raised to fulfill his destiny with, the boy pauses but briefly as an ever pervasive screen revealed itself in the room beyond, pausing for the barest instant as a final sound echoes into the air, bodies bunching to throw themselves forward into death, pauses to watch his big brother fulfill a destiny that should have been his own. Pauses, waiting.

BOOM!

The count ends, the world explodes, two bodies rocketing forward across two very different battle grounds. Following their destiny, even though at this point, they’re making it up as they go. 

Their whole life, they have had a pattern. Mycroft protects, Sherlock follows. That’s how it’s always been. How Sherlock always intends it to be. 

Slipping quietly into a cockpit, small hands barely grown finding controls and levers. Mycroft taught his little brother how to fly. He taught Sherlock how to use his skills wisely. He taught him how to survive.

Mycroft is the smart one, always has been. Sherlock’s the crazy one, always has been. And he’s going to fly his brother home.

 

Sherlock Holmes has made an art-form out of doing the impossible. He had a good teacher.

May the odds be ever in his favour.


End file.
